The leading question of the dialogue is: τί £anv ἐπιστήμη; knowledge now being understood as knowing-one's-way-around in something. The first answer given is: ἐπιστήμη is αἴσθησις. We translate: knowledge is 'perception' [Wahrnehmung].This translation is literally (lexically) correct. It is doubtful, however, whether it expresses the proper content of the specifically Greek problem contained in this answer.
How then is this thesis (knowledge is perception) arrived at? Let us consider this question on the basis of what we discovered from our earlier reflections on ἀλήθεια! If knowledge is in some sense possession of truth, and if the essence of knowledge consists in perception, then perception must carry, within itself, something like truth. Moreover, so that the attempt to answer the question of the essence of knowledge might strike out in the direction of the indicated answer, in order, therefore, that perception, as happens in the dialogue, can so naturally be brought forward as the bearer of truth, this must happen somehow at the instigation of perception (αἴσθησις) itself. Something must be contained in perception which immediately suggests that it (perception) should be taken as what shows the characteristic of possessing truth, and which thus allows it to be 'knowledge' of the first order. Now truth, ἀλήθεια, means the unhiddenness of beings, thus the fact that beings are manifest, that they show themselves. For the Greeks, wherever it happens that beings show them-